by Miranda Lee
‘The moment I saw you.’
‘But you’ve never met Janna—or anyone from Marvel-Mitchell,’ she said hollowly. ‘Until now you’ve always insisted on dealing through an intermediary—’
‘So you decided to be honest, in spite of the fact I might be none the wiser for the deception. I’m impressed. Or was I supposed to be?’ he added cynically. ‘Are you always so honest, I wonder?’
‘I try to be.’ Her tartness reproved his cynicism.
‘A neat piece of sophistry. You try but you don’t necessarily always succeed, mmm?’ His voice hardened. ‘You can’t have been so naïve as to think I wouldn’t investigate the people I do business with? I’m not a fool.’
‘I never thought you were.’ But she had seriously underestimated his thoroughness.
‘I’m sure that Marvel, too, conducted its own investigations into my integrity...?’
It was a question rather than a comment, and Vivian answered it as such.
‘Other than maintaining a current credit check, Peter felt there was no need, since we’ve been buying and selling properties on your behalf for several years without any problems,’ she replied curtly. ‘In spite of never having met you, Peter considers you a trusted ally. So your personal integrity was naturally taken for granted, Mr Rose.’ Her green eyes were wide and innocent as she made the final, pointed statement.
‘Call me Nick, Vivian.’ His reaction was equal bland innocence. ‘Of course, one man’s integrity is another man’s poison. I don’t do business with cheats and liars.’
‘Very wise,’ she agreed distractedly, unnerved by his mention of poison. Was that supposed to be significant?
‘Are you patronising me, Miss Mitchell?’ he asked silkily, planting his feet back on the floor and leaning his torso threateningly towards her.
She was jolted out of her unsettling ruminations. ‘I prefer to think of it as pandering to your every annoying little whim,’ she said sweetly.
There was another small, dangerous silence. He seemed to specialise in them.
He rose, unfolding himself to his full height with sinister slowness.
‘Brave, aren’t you?’ he murmured.
The thin, menacing smile and the burning gold splinters in his eye told her it was not a compliment. ‘So... Instead of the lawyer I requested, Marvel-Mitchell Realties sends me a mere receptionist. A suspicious man might take that as an insult...’
‘But then, from your investigations you must know I’m not just a receptionist,’ Vivian defended herself. ‘I’m also Peter Marvel’s secretary/PA, and for the last eighteen months a full financial partner in the firm. I’m fully authorised to sign cheques and contracts on behalf of Marvel-Mitchell Realties.’
Not that she ever had. Up until now she had been quite happy to be Peter’s sleeping partner—well, lightly dozing at any rate. She enjoyed her work and hadn’t looked on the investment of her unexpected inheritance in Peter’s firm as an excuse to throw her weight around the office, but rather as an investment in their shared future...
Brooding on that sadly faded dream, she didn’t notice him moving until a large hand was suddenly in front of her face. For an awful moment she thought his repressed hostility had finally erupted, but instead of the impact of his palm against her cheek, she felt him pull off her spectacles so that his image immediately dissolved into an indistinct blur.
‘Oh, please...’ She snatched vaguely, but he was too quick for her.
‘Salt build-up from all that sea-spray on the boat trip,’ he said blandly, retreating out of her reach. She squinted to see him produce a white square from his pocket and carefully rub the lenses with it. ‘They need a good clean.’
He held them up to the light and inspected them before breathing on the glass and polishing some more. ‘Pretty strong lenses. You must be extremely short-sighted.’
‘I am,’ she admitted truculently. She could have pointed out with brutal honesty that he had a few glaring imperfections of his own, but she was too soft-hearted for her own good—everyone said so. Even Peter, who was supposed to be madly in love with her, had always been exasperated by her ability to empathise with the opposing point of view in an argument.
‘You must be rather helpless without them.’
Was that a hint of gloating in his voice? She squinted harder. ‘Not helpless, just short-sighted,’ she said flatly.
Unexpectedly he laughed. It was a disturbingly rich sound, unflavoured by bitterness. ‘How long have you worn them?’
‘Since I was thirteen.’
And never had she been more grateful, for once there were spectacles firmly perched on her nose she found the boys less inclined to stare endlessly at her ever-burgeoning breasts. From a potential sex-pot she had become an egg-head, and even though her marks had been barely average she had managed to cling to the image until the other girls in her class had also started acquiring ogle-worthy figures.
‘May I have them back, please?’ she asked the blurry male outline, holding out her hand.
There was a pause. All he had to do was clench those strong fingers and the fragile frames would be crushed, leaving her more vulnerable than ever.
‘Of course.’
Instead of handing them to her, he replaced them himself, taking his time as he set them straight across the bridge of her nose, his face jumping back into disturbingly sharp focus, a close-up study in concentration as he tucked the ear-pieces carefully into place, his rough finger-pads sliding around on the ultra-sensitive skin behind her ears for long enough to make her shiver.
‘Th-thank you,’ she said reluctantly, edging back.
He followed her, his fingers still cradling the sides of her skull. ‘You have very speaking eyes.’ God, she hoped not! She blinked to clear her gaze of all expression and shuddered again at the intensity of his inspection. What was he searching for?
‘Are you cold?’
‘No.’ To her dismay it came out as a breathy squeak.
His hands dropped to her taut shoulders, then lightly drifted down the outsides of her arms to her tense fists.
‘You must be, after being out in that draughty old boat,’ he contradicted. ‘Your hands are as cold as ice and you’re trembling. You need some food inside you to warm you up.’
She cleared her throat. ‘I assure you, I’m perfectly warm,’ she said, pulling her hands away. ‘And I’m not hungry.’
‘Your stomach still feeling the effects of the trip?’ he murmured with annoying perception, his dark brown eyebrows lifted, the one above the eye-patch made raggedly uneven by the indent of the scar. ‘It’s a mistake to think the ride back will be easier on an empty stomach. You’ll feel much better with something inside you.’
Like you? The wayward thought popped into her head and Vivian went scarlet.
He stilled, looking curiously at her bright face and the horrified green eyes that danced away from his in guilty confusion. What in the world was the matter with her?
His eyebrows settled back down and his eyelid drooped, disguising his expression as he took her silence as assent. ‘Good, then you’ll join me for lunch...’
‘Thank you, but the boat leaves again in—’ Vivian looked at her watch ‘—twenty minutes, and I still have to get back down to the wharf—’
‘The captain won’t leave until he’s checked with me first.’ He effortlessly cut the ground from under her feet.
‘I’m really not hungry—’
‘And if I said that I hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday and was far too ravenous to concentrate on anything but feeding my appetite?’
Your appetite for what? thought Vivian as she silently weighed up her options...which proved to be extremely limited.
‘I’d say bon appétit,’ she sighed. Maybe he’d be easier to handle on a full stomach.
‘On the principle that it’s better I take bites out of food than out of you?’ he guessed wolfishly, coming a little too close to her earlier, forbidden meanderings.
‘Something like that,’ she said primly.
‘While I arrange something suitably light for you and filling for me, why don’t you get those papers out so I can look them over?’
Looking them over was a long way from signing, but Vivian hastened to do as he instructed while he was gone. He had shut the door behind him, and opened it so quietly on his return that she wasn’t aware of him until he loomed over her at the desk. The first she knew of him was the hot, predatory breath on the back of her neck.
‘You move very quietly—’ she began, in breathless protest at his consistent ability to surprise her.
‘For a cripple?’ he finished with biting swiftness.
‘That wasn’t what I was going to say!’ she protested, sensing that sympathy was the last thing he would ever want from her.
‘You were going to use a more diplomatic term, perhaps?’ he sneered. ‘Disabled? Physically challenged?’
She was suddenly blindly furious with him. How dared he think that she would be so callous, let alone so stupid, as to taunt him, no matter what the provocation!
‘You move quietly for such a big man is what I was going to say before you rudely interrupted,’ she snapped. ‘And an over-sensitive one, too, I might add. I didn’t leap down your throat when you drew attention to the fact I was blind as a bat, did I? And I have two supposedly undamaged legs and yet I never seem to be able to coordinate them properly. I dreamed of being a ballerina when I was a girl...’ She trailed off wistfully, suddenly remembering who it was she was confiding in.
‘A ballerina?’ He looked at her incredulously, his sceptical eye running over her five-feet-ten frame and the generous curves that rumpled the professional smoothness of her suit.
‘It was just a childish thing,’ she said dismissively, inexplicably hurt by his barely concealed amusement.
He tilted his head. ‘So you dreamed of becoming a perfect secretary instead?’ .
‘I wasn’t qualified for much else,’ she said coldly. Academically she had been a dud, but she was responsible and willing and got on well with people, her final-year form-teacher had kindly pointed out to her concerned parents, and weren’t those things far more important in attaining happiness in the wider world than the mere possession of a brilliant brain?
Of course some people—like Janna and their younger brother, Luke, who was a musical prodigy; and her mother and father, an artist and a mathematician respectively—managed to have it all...good looks included. Not that her family ever consciously made her feel inadequate. Quite the reverse—they sometimes went overboard in their efforts to convince her that she belonged, that she was the much-loved special one of the family. The Chosen One—because she had been adopted as a toddler, and had proved the unexpected catalyst for the rapid arrival of a natural daughter and then a son.
‘No other thwarted ambitions?’
‘No.’ She didn’t doubt he would laugh like a drain if she told him that her greatest desire was to be a wife and mother. It was her one outstanding talent: loving people— even when they made it very difficult for her. Sometimes almost impossible.
She looked down at the documents on the desk, concentrating on squaring them off neatly, aware of a nasty blurring of her eyesight that had nothing to do with foggy glasses.
The papers were suddenly snatched out of her fingers. ‘This is what you want me to sign?’
‘Mmm?’ Distracted by her thoughts, she took no notice of the faint emphasis. ‘Oh, yes.’ She pulled herself together, certain that her ugly suspicions were correct and that he was now going to announce dramatically that he had no intention of doing so.
Four months ago, when Nicholas Rose had signed a conditional agreement to sell his Auckland property, his lawyer had cited tax reasons for his client wishing to retain legal title until the end of April. Peter had been happy with the extended settlement date, for it had given him time to chase up the other parcels of land that had been part of the lucrative contract Marvel-Mitchell had entered into with a commercial property development company. Nicholas’s property had been the most critical, being a corner lot at the front of the planned shopping mall development, providing the only street access to the larger site. With that in his pocket, Peter had felt free to bid up on one or two other lots, whose owners had demanded much more than current market price.
Then Nicholas Rose had suddenly cancelled his appointment to sign the settlement in Auckland, citing a clause in the conditional agreement that gave the vendor the right to choose the time and place, and Janna had got sick, and Vivian had tried to be helpful and discovered two appalling truths: one, that Nicholas Rose was potentially an implacable enemy, and two, that her cosy dream of love and babies with Peter was shattered beyond redemption.
For long minutes there was no sound but the quiet swish of paper turning, and Vivian’s heart thundered in her ears as she waited for her enemy to reveal himself.
‘Where do I sign?’ He flicked cursorily back through the pages. ‘Here? Here? And here?’
‘Uh...yes.’ He bent and she watched disbelievingly as he uncapped a fountain pen and scrawled his initials in the right places, ending with a full, flourishing signature. The solid gold band on his ring-finger caught her eye as his hand paused, and she stared at the etching of snake and rose, the same crest that she had seen on the letterhead in his lawyer’s office.
‘Now you.’
She numbly took his place as he stood aside. The shaft of the expensive pen was heavy and smooth, warm from his touch, and she was so nervous that she left a large blob after her name. He blotted it without comment.
‘We’ll need this properly witnessed, won’t we?’
He didn’t wait for an answer but went to the door and bellowed for ‘Frank’.
The man in the dark suit came in. He gave Vivian a single, hostile, sharply assessing look, then took the proffered pen and co-signed the document with a tight-lipped frown.
‘Satisfied?’ he asked gratingly as he straightened up, throwing the pen down on to the desk.
‘Thank you, Frank.’
Frank grunted.
‘Lunch ready?’ Nicholas Rose asked, seemingly undismayed by his employee’s surly air of disapproval.
‘In the kitchen. Just as you ordered, sir. Just don’t expect me to serve it!’
‘We’ll serve ourselves.’ He turned to Vivian, who was watching the by-play with slightly dazed green eyes, still stunned by the inexplicable reprieve. Could she have been wrong about him, after all? ‘Frank heats up a mean soup. Frank is my right-hand man, by the way. Frank, this is Vivian.’
Another grunt and a bare acknowledgement.
‘I think Vivian has something to give you before you go, Frank.’
‘I do?’ She looked at them both blankly.
‘The money, Vivian,’ Nicholas reminded her helpfully. ‘If you haven’t brought the cash and the bank-cheque, then this contract of sale isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.’
‘Oh!’ She blushed. How unprofessional. She was surprised he hadn’t asked to see the money earlier. ‘Oh, yes, of course. It’s right here.’
She unfastened a locked compartment of her satchel, drawing out the thousand-dollar bundle of notes from a cloth bank-bag, and the crisp slip of paper that made up the balance. She was about to put them down on the desk when she hesitated, eyeing the settlement papers still splayed out in front of him, her fears blossoming anew. Her colour drained away as she nibbled her lip.
With a sardonic look, Nicholas Rose silently gathered up the papers and handed them to her. She tucked them hastily into the satchel before she gave him the bundles. She couldn’t quite hide her relief at getting rid of the oppressive responsibility and was chagrined when he tossed the money casually to Frank, who stuffed it in his suit pockets and stumped out, muttering something about the pilot.
‘This is all very unorthodox,’ she said disapprovingly.
‘I’m a very unorthodox man.’ If that was a warning, it had come far too late to
be of any protection. ‘Did it make you nervous travelling with such a large sum of cash?’
She thought of her sweaty drive and the almost sleepless night in the motel with a chair propped under the doorknob. ‘Very.’
‘Poor Vivian, no wonder you look so pale and tense.’ He casually brushed her cheek with his thumb and she nearly went through the roof at the bolt of electricity that sizzled her senses.
They looked at each other, startled. His gaze dropped to her soft naked mouth, open in shock, then to the sliver of thickly freckled skin revealed by the modest cleavage of her blouse and the faint suggestion of lace hinted at by the trembling rise and fall of her lush breasts against the cream silk. In that single, brief glance he stripped her naked and possessed her.
‘Come into the kitchen,’ he said quietly. ‘I know just what to give you to relax.’
He ushered her before him and she moved awkwardly, shaken by the most profoundly erotic experience of her life. And yet he had scarcely touched her! She felt confused, fearful and yet achingly alive, aware as never before of the feminine sway of her full hips and the brush of her thighs beneath her skirt. Her spine tingled in delicious terror. Was he stroking her again with that spiky look of hunger? Imagining how she would look moving in front of him without her clothes? She blushed in the dimness of the hall and chastised herself for her dangerous fantasies. Either it was all in her own mind, or Nicholas Rose had decided to set her up for a very personal form of humiliation. He couldn’t possibly be genuinely attracted to her, not a man who, despite his physical flaws, possessed a raw magnetism that probably gave him his pick of beautiful women, not a man who showed every sign of being bent on vengeance.
The kitchen was small and compact and clearly the preserve of someone who enjoyed cooking. The bench-top was wooden, slicked with the patina of age, in contrast to the microwave and modern appliances, and in the small dining-alcove was a well-scrubbed kauri table and three chairs. Evidently Nowhere Island was not normally used for business entertaining.
The table was set with rush place-mats and solid silver cutlery, and the steaming bowl of thick, creamy, fragrant soup that was set before her made Vivian’s tense stomach-muscles uncoil. There were bread rolls, too, which Nicholas got from the microwave, cursing as he burnt his fingers on the hot crusts.
